So I ordered the Keystoker KA6 today. I get a free ton on 100# bags of rice coal. Going to do bags for the first year and see how I like that. But the rest will be 50# bags. How big of a area should expect 4 ton to take up? No higher then 5 feet.

Ballpark area should be about 43 cu ft /ton or 172 cu ft.......unless Larry has some secret lightweight coal I don't know about. 100 lb bags....how rugged are you? Good health ins? Do you enjoy back surgery?....knee....hip....... Work smarter, not harder. I remember the days when they unloaded train cars of grain in 100 lb sacks. Took 2 BIG guys 7 hrs. No One screwed with those fellows.....6'6" 300lbs. Gentle Giants....never complained about a thing. Both gone at 68 and 72 yrs.......lung cancer.

Add a few cubic feet of safety margin for less dense coal than I've been getting and I called it 145 cubic feet for 4 tons.

Larry, for a guy who takes his calculations to the fourth decimal place, that assumption about the actual capacity of the pail seems out of character. Have you considered measuring the actual capacity of the pail (e.g., with a measured amount of water) so your computations are a little more robust? Your numbers here say that you can fit a ton into less than 35 cubic feet; which seems pretty low.

Although I have to admit that I've never measured the volume of a 5 gallon plastic pail that is full to the brim, I do know that per DOT regulations you can't fill a pail legally to where it has less than 1" of air space remaining at the top, and they must be a full legal 5 gallons to that point if they are advertised as 5 gallon pails.

Assuming 13" in diameter and 1 inch deep to the 5 gallon line, that is 132.7 cubic inches of head space. That equals 0.144 gallons of head space. So allowing for a bit of error perhaps I should have assumed that a 5 gallon pail has 5.15 gallons of capacity full level to the top.

That would bring a pail with 41 lbs. of coal in it to 7.96 lbs per gallon, and 59.55 lbs per cubic foot.

8,000/59.55 = 134.3 cubic feet required to hold 4 tons.

But if my error is in the opposite direction by about the same amount and therefore a 5 gallon plastic pail actually holds 5.5 gallons when full level to the top then for 41 lbs. that is 7.45 lbs. per gallon, and that comes to 55.7 pounds per cubic foot.

ShawnTRD wrote:So I ordered the Keystoker KA6 today. I get a free ton on 100# bags of rice coal. Going to do bags for the first year and see how I like that. But the rest will be 50# bags. How big of a area should expect 4 ton to take up? No higher then 5 feet.

UMMM,

You must have been at Warners the same time I was Shawn.

It all depends on whether "said" bags were tied with a millers knot and or if they are the less expensive woven polyester open mouth sacks with the sewn base base.

If they were tied with a millers knot, know that they will be very unweildy and hard to stack at first BECAUSE the open mouth bag has been tied in the center and the bag cannot settle flat due to thepinching and tying of the bag at the center. the same goes for the fifty pound bags if they are tied also.

You will have to compromise and stand them up one bag high which will be much less aggravating and reduce the chance of spillage and bag breakage.plan on at least 9 by 9 feet for every ton, one bag high with the bags stored vertical.

Last edited by lzaharis on Sat Apr 05, 2014 11:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

lzaharis wrote: You will have to compromise and stand them up one bag high which will be much less aggravating and reduce the chance of spillage and bag breakage.plan on at least 9 by 9 feet for every ton, one bag high with the bags stored vertical.

Instead of 324 sf taken up by bags, you might consider building a 4x8x5'H bin, which would hold the 4 tons with a much smaller footprint. As whistlenut mentioned, it's not going to be any fun lifting those big bags to fill the hopper on a KA-6, so just use them to fill a bulk bin.